My First Warmachine Tournament!

It was November 25th, 2012, and I was beginning my fist 'legit' warmachine tournament ever.  I say legit, in quotations, as I have in fact been in an online warmachine tournament of sorts that I ran with four other friends.  This however was different, it was for real.

We rolled out of the house in a timely manner and were waiting outside the SentryBox promptly at 10am.  It was here that discovered the first major digression from my typical GW style tournament event.  We spent the first 30 minutes just hanging around chatting as we waited for people to show up.  The Calgary warmachine crew seems to be a fairly tight knit group, so everyone knew everyone else and they were fine with waiting for a while to make sure everyone showed up.  This event was custom made to lure in new blood to their scene though, so in addition to my roomates and me there were a couple more new people there, along with some out of town folk.

As you may have gathered from my previous blog posts, this event was a battlebox style tournament.  We were allowed to bring a limited amount of jacks/beasts and one warnoun that was the original version of that character.  The eleven point games were originally set to be deathclock, but the TO decided to get rid of the time limits since this was supposed to be a more relaxed event.  The list I brought was one point under the limit, but I later found out that plenty of other people were also a point or two under.

I brought Adeptis Rahn Shyeel, a Phoenix, and a Gryphon.

Game One Deployment

My first game was a tough one!  My opponent was rocking three Khador heavies: Karchev, a Kodiak, and a Juggernaut.  With only my Phoenix to deal with heavy armour I was in for an up hill battle!  

I fought valiently, and managed to surprise my opponent by using Telekinesis to open up a charge lane on his caster.  Unfortunately my Phoenix didn't manage to do much damage to him and Rahn was killed by the Kodiak in the following turn.  Also, I was having way too much fun to remember to take any more pictures.

Picture of the Dwarf army, shamelessly stolen from the COGS forum.

My second game was against Gotren Grundback and six Grundback Gunners!  This guy one the award for the army with the coolest theme.  We also played on the board seen in the picture above.  I did all I could to run my guys into combat and beat down his army of walking guns, but between lackluster rolls with my Phoenix and intelligent use of Grundback's feat my army was systematically dismantled.  The game ended with Rahn being hit by his third headbutt attempt with as many jacks and then being taking both barrels of Grundback's pistol to the face.

Opponent #3, picture from COGS forum again.

Apparently I was destined to win a game in this tournament though, as my next round was a bye.  I played against the tournament organizer who was using the basic Madrak battlebox army pictured above. It seemed to me that my opponent wasn't really going all out against me, but it was still quite a fun game.  I ended up beating down Madrak with Rahn after a failed assassination run.

Final opponent, minus caster.  Picture borrowed from COGS again.

My final game was against the other Retribution player of the event.  He brought Kaelyssa along with a Sphinx and a Banshee.  It was also a great game, if marred by a little sloppy play.  Critically, he forgot to use his Witch Hound shot when I used Telekinesis to pull his Banshee into charge range of my Phoenix.  After a hard fought battle I had only Rahn left while he still had Kaelissa and an injured Sphinx.  Camping focus was useless against her shooting, so I resolved to try and get one lucky force hammer in to try and win the game. I needed an eight to hit, which I effortlessly obtained.  Then, using my last dice to boost, I needed to roll an eleven to seal the deal.

I rolled a ten!

With one damage box left, his caster was able to pump out a couple more shots and finish me off.  It was probably the best game of the event for me, as I actually felt like I gave him a good challenge.

When the dust settled I had one a single game out of my four, which was my goal going in to the tournament as I know I still have a lot to learn about this game.  I'm looking forward to playing against these guys again.